Proposal for Revised University Multicultural Studies Requirement

Kenneth Koford

Chairperson

Undergraduate Studies Committee of the Faculty Senate

**DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION**

Given our discussions, and particularly Doug Buttrey’s ideas, I propose the following new Policy.

Requirement for all global/multicultural courses.

All students in the university are required to take 6 credits (two 3 credit courses) from two lists:

1) Global Perspectives

2) Multicultural

Students must take one course from list 1, Global Perspectives. They have the choice of taking the second course from either list.

Requirement for a course to be on either list:

All multicultural/globalization courses MUST

1) Show awareness and understanding of a non-dominant and widely known culture, and

2) Show how learning about that culture increases the students’ awareness of how other cultures see us, and vice versa.

3) Increase student awareness of cultures outside of the dominant one and commonly-known ones, and show how it is important to understand their values, and show students that it is important to take into account the view and value of non-dominent and well-known cultures.

Courses must include a multicultural perspective as their primary goal; to satisfy this requirement, the bulk of the content must introduce students to the perspective or experience of non-dominant western cultures or peoples (so, including non-western, non-white, and gender-sensitive content).

A mere bare majority of material satisfying the requirement will not be sufficient. The esssence of thecourse must be strongly oriented to the goals of a multilcalual/globalization set of goals.

Definition:

Globalization course (?)

Multicultural course (roughly lie current defition?)

Rationale:

We believe that recent events and the passage of 16 years imply a different focus: closer to Global Perspectives: understanding the world, and also having a sense of the world perspective, how the world sees us.

(We need more support here)

Programs abroad may be valuable, but these must have a really strong global and multicultural focus. A class visiting Australia, or London, might not satisfy the overall goal as well as courses in Ghana or South Africa where students see and understand a truly different environment.

The current wording and understanding of “multicultural” probably needs change, as a more global focus plays importance. Also, requires some de-emphasis on race, ethnicity and gender. Most committee members think that the “available sphere” of student knowledge and understanding on these points has changed in 16 years, so that a novel non-dominant idea from the mid-1980s would seem rather standard in today’s world.

Procedure: We when we have a clear proposal, we shall it to the Coordinating Committee, and then to the Faculty Senate. Our hope is to have a resolution,this spring, before the Faculty Senate. An open hearing may be appropriate if there is widespread debate.

The Committee will be delighted to hear thoughts and comments on all of these points. You can contact me at KofordK@lerner.udel.edu or the committee via Karren@udel.edu

With the new wording requirement and emphasis, teachers of appropriate courses are required to provide new requests and supporting material to include their courses in the Multicultural Course list as of Fall 2004.